As the four Artemis astronauts approached a high point of their lunar mission—getting slung around the far side of the moon—NASA staffers crowded into Houston's famed mission control room Monday for a team photo.

They were all smiles as countdown clocks ticked and the Orion spacecraft flew ever closer to Earth's cratered neighbor, a mission years in the making come to fruition at last.

By most metrics it's been a rough year for science in the United States—the Trump administration has slashed funding, halted projects and devastated workforces.

But then, NASA sent astronauts around the moon for the first time in half a century, deeper into space than ever before.

The moonshot has served as a "massive positive moment," said exploration scientist Jacob Bleacher.

"People have been working on this for months, years—over a decade in some cases," he told AFP.

The majority of Americans, including NASA scientists, weren't yet born when the Apollo era first sent astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s.